Efficient and low-cost characterization of cell lines is of great interest due to applications in pharmaceutical, clinical, and research settings. With regard to pharmaceutical applications, characterization of cellular responses to a new drug in preclinical testing, at individual and population levels, can provide insight into the effectiveness of the new drug or detrimental effects of the new drug. In clinical and research settings, characterization of cellular responses from patients and donors can provide insight into the effects of applied experimental conditions. In recent years, there has been significant progress in using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and other cell types for modeling of human disease; however, characterization in an efficient and low-cost manner has not been successfully achieved. In particular, progress in testing and characterization of patient-specific cardiomyocytes (e.g., iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes) has been limited by several factors. In order to successfully capture dynamics of cardiomyocyte beating, several challenges need to be addressed. Appropriate methods and systems should be capable of handling variations in culture density, cultures of varying health state, and experimentally manipulated cultures. Furthermore, characterization is often challenging due to sensitivity of cultures to plating density, irregularities in motion (e.g., beating) patterns, and impurities in culture. Due to these and many other factors, proper characterization of cardiomyocytes, including characterization of cell motion in an efficient, low-cost, and accurate manner has been severely hindered.
Thus, there is a need in the sample imaging field to create a new and useful method and system for characterizing cell motion. This invention provides such a useful method and system.